OUR STORY
During the COVID-19 crisis, Belize was the 3rd hardest-hit tourism dependent country in the world. Over 40% of jobs were lost immediately as the borders closed, with the ripple effect on the informal economy being even greater and more difficult to measure. With hundreds of thousands left without an income, the need for emergency food assistance was vast and immediate.
With the help of generous donors, a group of caring and committed individuals came together to create the #FeedBelize Emergency Relief Food Program.
In 3 months, our team provided over 1600 families (approximately 6400 Belizeans) with a week’s worth of food. Government assistance was not able to reach many of the country’s most vulnerable citizens, and anyone who was not employed full-time as part of the formal economy was excluded from receiving aid. Senior citizens and single mothers were some of the first to be without food.
The emergency response program was wildly successful and extremely well-received. But it highlighted an important issue- why were so many people food insecure, in one of the best countries for growing in the world?
While 25% of the labour force is in the agricultural sector, it’s typically for exports. Most residents of Belize do not farm their own land, and even having a small backyard garden is extremely uncommon.
We decided we wanted to help change that, and Eden Project Belize was formed.
OUR LOCATION
Situated on the Caribbean coast of Central America, Belize is a small but geographically diverse country with an exotic mix of peoples, including the Mestizo, Creole, Garifuna and descendants of the Mayans.
Small but mighty, the country of Belize is 22,970 square kilometres, and has a population of only 408,000 people.
Belize’s incredible landscape can be divided into four regions: the mountains, the rainforest, the Caribbean coast, and the Caribbean islands.
According to the U.N., 61% or about 1,393,000 hectares of Belize is forested. Of this, 43% is classified as primary forest, the most biodiverse and carbon-dense form of forest. Belize's forests contain 171 million metric tons of carbon in living forest biomass. Belize has 877 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles according to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Of these, nearly 2% are endemic, meaning they exist in no other country in the world.
Eden Project Belize is located in Sleeping Giant Rainforest, nestled in the Maya Mountains in beautiful Cayo District. We are on a pristine 10-acre plot, next to the 10,000 acre Sibun National Forest Reserve and Sleeping Giant Rainforest Lodge.
